Colorado Symphony 2017/18 Season Presenting Sponsor:
CLASSICS • 2017/18 ALL-BEETHOVEN CONDUCTED BY BRETT MITCHELL COLORADO SYMPHONY BRETT MITCHELL, conductor JEFFREY KAHANE, piano This Weekend's Performances are Gratefully Dedicated to AMG National Trust Bank Friday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Kenneth King Foundation Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Ms. Amy Harmon
Friday, December 1, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, December 2, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, December 3, 2017, at 1:00 p.m. Boettcher Concert Hall BEETHOVEN
Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 Allegro moderato Andante con moto — Rondo: Vivace — INTERMISSION — BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 Adagio — Allegro vivace Adagio Menuetto: Allegro vivace Allegro ma non troppo
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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES BRETT MITCHELL, conductor Hailed for delivering compelling performances of innovative, eclectic programs, Brett Mitchell begins his tenure as Music Director of the Colorado Symphony with the 2017-18 season. Prior to this four-year appointment, he served as Music Director Designate during the 2016-17 season. Mr. Mitchell’s recently announced inaugural season as Music Director of the Colorado Symphony features such guest artists as Renée Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma, as well as a significant commitment to a broad range of American music, from Copland, Bernstein, and Gershwin to Kevin Puts, Mason Bates, and Missy Mazzoli. Other highlights include Mahler’s First Symphony, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Ravel’s complete Daphnis et Chloé, and Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra. Mr. Mitchell will also lead Handel’s Messiah, Wagner/Maazel’s The Ring without Words, and a two-part celebration of the music of John Williams, featuring a program of Mr. Williams’s concert works and a live-to-film performance of his score for Jurassic Park. Mr. Mitchell is also currently in his fourth and final season as a member of The Cleveland Orchestra’s conducting staff. He joined the orchestra as Assistant Conductor in 2013, and was promoted to Associate Conductor in 2015, becoming the first person to hold that title in over three decades and only the fifth in the orchestra’s hundred-year history. In this role, he leads the orchestra in several dozen concerts each season at Severance Hall, Blossom Music Center, and on tour. From 2013 to 2017, Mr. Mitchell also served as the Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, performing full subscription seasons at Severance Hall, and leading the orchestra on a four-city tour of China in 2015, marking the ensemble’s second international tour and its first to Asia. In addition to these titled positions, Mr. Mitchell is in consistent demand as a guest conductor. Recent and upcoming guest engagements include the orchestras of Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Oregon, Rochester, Saint Paul, San Antonio, and Washington (National Symphony Orchestra), among others. His Summer 2017 festival appearances include the Blossom Music Festival with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Grant Park Orchestra in Chicago, the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, the Sarasota Music Festival, and the Texas Music Festival in Houston. He has collaborated with such soloists as Rudolf Buchbinder, James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, Leila Josefowicz, and Alisa Weilerstein. From 2007 to 2011, Mr. Mitchell led over one hundred performances as Assistant Conductor of the Houston Symphony, to which he frequently returns as a guest conductor. He also held Assistant Conductor posts with the Orchestre National de France, where he worked under Kurt Masur from 2006 to 2009, and the Castleton Festival, where he worked under Lorin Maazel in 2009 and 2010. In 2015, Mr. Mitchell completed a highly successful five-year appointment as Music Director of the Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra, where an increased focus on locally relevant programming and community collaborations resulted in record attendance throughout his tenure. As an opera conductor, Mr. Mitchell has served as music director of nearly a dozen productions, principally at his former post as Music Director of the Moores Opera Center in Houston, where PROGRAM 2
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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES he led eight productions from 2010 to 2013. His repertoire spans the core works of Mozart (The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute), Verdi (Rigoletto and Falstaff), and Stravinsky (The Rake’s Progress) to contemporary works by Adamo (Little Women), Aldridge (Elmer Gantry), Catán (Il Postino and Salsipuedes), and Hagen (Amelia). As a ballet conductor, Mr. Mitchell most recently led a production of The Nutcracker with the Pennsylvania Ballet in collaboration with The Cleveland Orchestra during the 2016-17 season. Born in Seattle in 1979, Mr. Mitchell holds degrees in conducting from the University of Texas at Austin and composition from Western Washington University, which selected him in as its Young Alumnus of the Year in 2014. He also studied at the National Conducting Institute, and was selected by Kurt Masur as a recipient of the inaugural American Friends of the Mendelssohn Foundation Scholarship. Mr. Mitchell was also one of five recipients of the League of American Orchestras’ American Conducting Fellowship from 2007 to 2010. brettmitchellconductor.com
JEFFREY KAHANE, piano Equally at home at the keyboard or on the podium, Jeffrey Kahane has established an international reputation as a versatile artist, recognized by audiences for his diverse repertoire ranging from Bach and Beethoven to Golijov and John Adams. Since making his Carnegie Hall debut in 1983, he has given recitals in many of the nation’s major music centers including New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Equally at home as a chamber musician, Mr. Kahane collaborates with many of today’s most important chamber ensembles. Jeffrey Kahane made his conducting debut in 1988. Since then, he has guest conducted many of the major U.S. orchestras. He has received much recognition for his innovative programming and commitment to education and community involvement and received ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming for his work in both Los Angeles and Denver. Jeffrey Kahane has recorded works by Gershwin and Bernstein with Yo-Yo- Ma, the complete works for violin and piano by Schubert with Joseph Swensen, and Bach concertos with LACO and Hilary Hahn. A native of Los Angeles and a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Mr. Kahane’s studied with Howard Weisel and Jakob Gimpel. First Prize winner at the 1983 Rubinstein Competition and finalist at the 1981 Van Cliburn Competition. An avid linguist who reads widely in a number of ancient and modern languages, Mr. Kahane received a Master’s Degree in Classics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2011. He is currently a Professor of Keyboard Studies at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. Jeffrey Kahane resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Martha, a clinical psychologist. They have two children—Gabriel, a composer, pianist and singer/songwriter and Annie, a dancer and poet.
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827): Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72 Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770 in Bonn and died on March 26, 1827 in Vienna. The Leonore Overture No. 3 was composed in 1806 and premiered at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien on March 29, 1806. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 14 minutes. Last performance by the orchestra took place on April 25-27, 2014, with Michael Stern on the podium. The most visible remnants of the extensive revisions to which Beethoven subjected his Fidelio between 1804 and 1814 are the four overtures he composed for the opera. The first version, written between January 1804 and early autumn 1805, was initially titled Leonore after the heroine, who courageously rescues her husband from his wrongful incarceration. For that production, Beethoven wrote the Overture in C major now known as the Leonore No. 1, utilizing themes from the opera. The composer’s friend and early biographer Anton Schindler recorded that Beethoven rejected this first attempt after hearing it privately performed at Prince Lichnowsky’s palace before the premiere. (Another theory, supported by recent detailed examination of the paper on which the sketches for the piece were made, holds that this work was written in 1806-1807 for a projected performance of the opera in Prague that never took place, thus making Leonore No. 1 the third of the Fidelio overtures.) He composed a second C major overture, Leonore No. 2, and that piece was used at the first performance, on November 20, 1805. (The management of Vienna’s Theatre an der Wien, site of the premiere, insisted on changing the opera’s name from Leonore to Fidelio to avoid confusion with Ferdinand Paër’s Leonore.) The opera foundered. Not only was the audience, largely populated by French officers of Napoleon’s army, which had invaded Vienna one week earlier, unsympathetic, but there were also problems in Fidelio’s dramatic structure. Beethoven was encouraged by his aristocratic supporters to rework the opera and present it again. That second version, for which the magnificent Leonore Overture No. 3 was written, was presented in Vienna on March 29, 1806, but met with little more acclaim than its forerunner. In 1814, some members of the Court Theater approached Beethoven, by then Europe’s most famous composer, about reviving Fidelio. The idealistic subject of the opera had never been far from his thoughts, and he agreed to the project. The libretto was revised yet again, and Beethoven rewrote all the numbers in the opera and changed their order to enhance the work’s dramatic impact. The new Fidelio Overture, the fourth he composed for his opera, was among the revisions. Beethoven realized that the earlier Overtures, especially the Leonore No. 3, simply overwhelmed what followed (“As a curtain raiser, it almost made the raising of the curtain superfluous,” judged Irving Kolodin), and, from a technical viewpoint, were in the wrong tonality to match the revised beginning of the opera. The compact Fidelio Overture, in E major, is now always heard to open the opera. The Leonore No. 3 often appears between the two scenes of Act II, a practice instituted by Otto Nicolai when he produced Fidelio in Vienna in the early 1840s. Both are regular entries on concert programs. The Leonore No. 3 distills the essential dramatic progression of the opera into purely musical terms: the triumph of good over evil, the movement from darkness to light, from subjugation to freedom, is integral to this music. The structure of the Overture follows basic sonata design, but adapted by Beethoven to fit the dramatic requirements of his subject. It begins with a
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES broad, slow introduction, by turns lugubrious and threatening, during which the clarinets and bassoons intone the opening phrases of the aria Florestan sings in his dungeon prison. In a faster tempo, the violins present the arch-shaped main theme, which grows to a riveting climax before the entry of the complementary theme, a lyrical strain introduced quietly by flute and violins. The development section is filled with sudden dynamic changes and expressive harmonic excursions that mirror the perilous struggles of the play. Then, in an unforgettable coup de théâtre, a distant trumpet call signals deliverance for Florestan and his faithful Leonore. The recapitulation of the themes glows in triumph. A jubilant coda, begun with whirling scales in the strings, brings this superb work to a stirring close.
BEETHOVEN (1770-1827): Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 The Fourth Piano Concerto was composed in 1804-1806 and premiered on March 5, 1807 at the palace of Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz in Vienna, with the composer as soloist. The score calls for flute, pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 32 minutes. Yefim Bronfman was the piano soloist and Andrew Litton conducted when the concerto was last performed on May 22-24, 2015. The Napoleonic juggernaut twice overran the city of Vienna. The first occupation began on November 13, 1805, less than a month after the Austrian armies had been soundly trounced by the French legions at the Battle of Ulm on October 20th. Though the entry into Vienna was peaceful, the Viennese had to pay dearly for the earlier defeat in punishing taxes, restricted freedoms and inadequate food supplies. On December 28th, following Napoleon’s fearsome victory at Austerlitz that forced the Austrian government into capitulation, the Little General left Vienna. He returned in May 1809, this time with cannon and cavalry sufficient to subdue the city by force, creating conditions that were worse than those during the previous occupation. As part of his booty and in an attempt to ally the royal houses of France and Austria, Napoleon married Marie Louise, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Austrian Emperor Franz. She became the successor to his first wife, Josephine, whom he divorced because she was unable to bear a child. It was to be five years — 1814 — before the Corsican was finally defeated and Emperor Franz returned to Vienna, riding triumphantly through the streets of the city on a huge, white Lipizzaner. Such soul-troubling times would seem to be antithetical to the production of great art, yet for Beethoven, that ferocious libertarian, those years were the most productive of his life. Hardly had he begun one work before another appeared on his desk, and his friends recalled that he labored on several scores simultaneously during this period. Sketches for many of the works appear intertwined in his notebooks, and an exact chronology for most of the works from 1805 to 1810 is impossible. So close were the dates of completion of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, for example, that their numbers were reversed when they were given their premieres on the same giant concert as the Fourth Concerto. Between Fidelio, which was in its last week of rehearsal when Napoleon entered Vienna in 1805, and the music for Egmont, finished shortly
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES after the second invasion, Beethoven composed the following major works: “Appassionata” Sonata, Op. 57; Violin Concerto; Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos; three Quartets of Op. 59; Leonore Overture No. 3; Coriolan Overture; Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies; two Piano Trios (Op. 70); “Les Adieux” Sonata, Op. 81a; and many smaller songs, chamber works and piano compositions. It is a stunning record of accomplishment virtually unmatched in the history of music. Of the nature of the Fourth Concerto, Milton Cross wrote, “[Here] the piano concerto once and for all shakes itself loose from the 18th century. Virtuosity no longer concerns Beethoven at all; his artistic aim here, as in his symphonies and quartets, is the expression of deeply poetic and introspective thoughts.” The mood is established immediately at the outset of the work by a hushed, prefatory phrase for the soloist. The form of the movement, vast yet intimate, begins to unfold with the ensuing orchestral introduction, which presents the rich thematic material: the pregnant main theme, with its small intervals and repeated notes; the secondary themes — a melancholy strain with an arch shape and a grand melody with wide leaps; and a closing theme of descending scales. The soloist re-enters to enrich the themes with elaborate figurations. The central development section is haunted by the rhythmic figuration of the main theme (three short notes and an accented note). The recapitulation returns the themes, and allows an opportunity for a cadenza (Beethoven composed two for this movement) before a glistening coda closes the movement. The second movement starkly opposes two musical forces — the stern, unison summons of the strings and the gentle, touching replies of the piano. Franz Liszt compared this music to Orpheus taming the Furies, and the simile is warranted, since both Liszt and Beethoven traced their visions to the magnificent scene in Gluck’s Orfeo where Orpheus’ music charms the very fiends of Hell. In the Concerto, the strings are eventually subdued by the entreaties of the piano, which then gives forth a wistful little song filled with quivering trills. After only the briefest pause, a high-spirited and long-limbed rondo-finale is launched by the strings to bring the Concerto to a stirring close.
BEETHOVEN (1770-1827): Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 The Fourth Symphony was composed in 1806 and premiered at the Viennese palace of Prince Lobkowitz during March 1807. The score calls for flute, pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 30 minutes. Julian Kuerti led the orchestra when the piece was last performed on December 4-5, 2009. On November 13, 1805 Napoleon’s army entered Vienna. A week later, Beethoven gave the first performance of Fidelio before an audience largely comprising French officers. It failed. The French forces withdrew early the next year, and the local aristocrats, who had fled Vienna before the invasion, returned to their city palaces. Fidelio, extensively revised, was presented again on March 29, 1806, but its reception was still cool. Beethoven spent the summer of 1806 away from Vienna. His first visit was to the ancestral Hungarian estate of his friend Count Brunsvick at Martonvásár, where the Count’s sisters, Thérèse, Joséphine and Caroline, were also in residence. PROGRAM 6
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES Journalist and Harvard librarian Alexander Wheelock Thayer, in his pioneering biography of the composer, spread the rumor that Beethoven and Thérèse got engaged that May, and that it was under the spell of that love affair that the Fourth Symphony was conceived. In 1890, a book appeared titled Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved, from Personal Reminiscences, purporting to be from Thérèse’s hand, that recounted the relationship. It was a hoax. (“The Immortal Beloved,” to whom Beethoven wrote three unheaded letters, was convincingly identified in Maynard Solomon’s 1977 biography of the composer as Antonie Brentano, a married Viennese noblewoman. Solomon also showed the letters to have been written in 1812, not 1806.) The Fourth Symphony was therefore apparently not a musical love-child, though the country calm of that summer, perhaps the most halcyon time of Beethoven’s life, may have influenced the character of the work. After visiting with the Brunsvicks, Beethoven moved to the summer castle of Prince Lichnowsky at Grätz in Silesia. Lichnowsky introduced him to his neighbor in Ober-Glogau, Count Franz von Oppersdorf, a moneyed aristocrat who placed such importance on his household musical establishment that he would not hire a servant unable to play an instrument. Oppersdorf, an admirer of Beethoven’s music, arranged a performance by his private orchestra of the Second Symphony for the composer’s visit, and, further, commissioned him to write a new symphony. Beethoven put aside the C minor Symphony (No. 5), already well advanced, to work on the commission, and most of the B-flat Symphony was completed during September and October 1806 at Lichnowsky’s castle. It is sweetness subtly tinged with Romantic pathos that opens the Fourth Symphony. The main theme is a buoyant tune given by the violins. The complementary melody is a snappy theme discussed by bassoon, oboe and flute. Inventive elaborations of the main theme occupy the movement’s development before a heightened recall of the earlier melodies and a vigorous coda close the movement. Of the second movement, little needs to be added to the words of Hector Berlioz: “Its form is so pure and the expression of its melody so angelic and of such irresistible tenderness that the prodigious art by which this perfection is attained disappears completely.” Though Beethoven called the third movement a minuet, it is really one of his most boisterous scherzos. The outer sections of the movement, with their rugged syncopations, sudden harmonic and dynamic shifts and tossing-about of melodic fragments among the orchestral participants, stand in strong contrast to the suave central trio. The finale is a whirlwind sonata form with occasional moments of strong expression in its development section. ©2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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